


Ready

by comebacknow



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Descriptions of Blood, Guns, Knives, M/M, Minho POV, Post-Apocalyptic, Violence, au? canon? could be read as either?, in like a dark way, not a happy ending? but kind of?, stream of consciousness?, tmrss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28052088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comebacknow/pseuds/comebacknow
Summary: In the heart of a post-apocalyptic war, Minho takes the few minutes he has before his final battle to accept that he may never see a future.
Relationships: Gally/Minho (Maze Runner)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 15
Collections: Maze Runner Secret Santa 2020





	Ready

**Author's Note:**

  * For [singtome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singtome/gifts).



> Hello! Happy secret santa! You asked for "dystopia au! wasteland wanderings, maybe a little mad max-esque. gimme two people falling in love at the end of the world"
> 
> I hope this glimpse of desert-post apocalyptic-war-darkness fills some of that space for you! Happy holidays!! <3
> 
> [[ please read the tags! there are descriptions of guns, knives, wounds and more. mentions of blood and scars. it's war :/ .. ]]

Minho thinks about the idea of a future while his hands move mechanically in front of unseeing eyes. The way his fingers dance along the sides of rigid, hand-melded shotgun shells. They’re cool under his skin, but it’s not long before they slide into the cylinder that will become a brief home for them. Brief, until they’re expelled; thrown into a war they never signed up for. Made, sculpted and built to be a weapon. That is how they were born and that is how they’ll die.

He remembers the first time he shot a gun. He was no older than a teenager when he was thrown into battle unwillingly. He’d watched body after body fall outside of their shelter through slats of a slim window at the roof of their bunker. The slats let dim sunshine in that spilled in long lines across the dusty floor and when you walked past them, the light flickered in and out with shadows across your face. Gunshots were nothing new to him, not from this position. Sometimes the quiet, sniffled cries around him actually sounded louder than the gunshots. He dreamt about the shots, the bodies, the cries. He had nightmares about what life would be like without them.

It was when a body slammed into the window and knocked him back from the counter he stood on, his fingertips clinging to the edge of the windowsill so he could watch with wide-eyes. The wooden slats broke apart; chips and splinters sprinkled down onto him as he shielded his eyes from the light. And when he squinted up, there was an arm dangling carelessly from the ledge, and slowly, blood dripped down from the elbow, tracing veins down a scarred arm, around a shallow wrist and down bloody knuckles until it dripped from a fingertip and landed on his own. And there, next to his own hand, was the fallen soldier’s fallen gun.

It was a simple weapon – no bigger than a canteen and barely heavier. Sleek cool metal with strange ridges that felt out of place against his palm.

He remembers the way the heat bit into his skin when he crawled through the window, the way the trigger held against his desire to pull it until it finally gave. The hammer, the recoil, and then the tin-can shelter against his back when he fell into it.

He didn’t hit anything, of course. Not on the first try nor the second.

Over the next ten years, he’d make his marks. Few, at first. Enough where he kept count in his head. And then he kept count by carving tallies into the walls of the shelter. When they’d left that first shelter, crossed desert and rock and sand to a new one, and then a third, and then a sixth, he never started another tally. But sometimes he dreamt about the thirty-seven lines carved next to his cot, and wondered what the next inhabitants would think they meant.

  
  


“Your shoulder-strap is loose.”

Minho twitches a brow, barely moving his head to the side as Gally’s voice rings out behind him. He feels hands at his back before he sees him. The left strap of his harness tightens around his shoulder and he winces as the nylon bites into the two-day old gash in his skin.

“Alright?” Gally asks, giving the harness a small tug.

Minho rolls his shoulder back twice and then stretches his neck to the right. “Will be.”

Gally presses his hand to the back of Minho’s shoulder briefly and then steps away to the table. He’s grown from the time he shot his first gun, too. Minho – taller than him then – had been the one to teach him how. Gally was a wiry thing back then. Tufts of hair that never seemed to lie flat, a thin neck that Minho could have fit his hand around, and limbs that looked like they could’ve been sawed off to be made into their own gun barrels. But the years go on, and survival changes people. Minho wonders the ways he’s changed, but he doesn’t give the thought much time. It’s not like they have it anyway.

Gally picks a dagger up from the table by the blade, but his eyes rove the rest of the weapons. He flips it once in his hand and his arm flexes as he tests the hilt. A second later it clatters down as he trades it for another. Ten years ago, Minho might have said it was the same dagger. Now, he knows the difference between the two – the way one has a point that curves up a bit more, the hilt that fits better to Gally’s palm. The way the smallest ounce of weight can make all the difference in the way you strike ahead of you versus behind.

He watches Gally tuck the knife over his right shoulder, a small holster attached to the back of it. It’s a small change they made, but an important one they learned six years ago. Daggers are kept at hips, thighs, calves and ankles; they rest at waistbands and lower backs. Those are the first places people have learned to check and to keep you from reaching toward. Your legs are the first to be targeted. No one thinks to check over your shoulder, and there was a time this included them.

Minho self-consciously touches his fingers to the scar on his right bicep. It’s faded now, but it’s a part of him, like most other things this world has given them.

“Planning on holding that against me today?” Newt asks.

Minho tears his focus from Gally’s dagger to look to the other side. Newt’s already prepped, of course. The first one up, last one down. He’s got weapons strapped around him, a string of ammo slung around his waist and, of course, the black metal brace buckled around his leg.

He makes his way to Minho, his lean heavier on one side. Minho can’t see them from here, because Newt’s learned to conceal them enough to be invisible while still keeping them accessible at a moment’s need, but he knows the daggers are there tucked behind his shoulders. Four of them.

 _Everyone goes for the legs first_ , Newt had told him three hours after he’d ripped a dagger from his shoulder holster and stabbed it into Minho’s arm.

They’d joined forces after that, of course, when they realized they were on the same side. Newt told them about learning the hard way to not rely on your legs and to use your whole body as a weapon. There were places people didn’t check, didn’t bother with, didn’t aim for first to slow you down.

“No,” Minho laughs and drops his hand from the scar. “Are you guys almost ready?”

Newt turns and looks into the room he just came from. “Almost.”

Minho nods and turns back to his own table. He tucks the small handgun into the pocket in front of his heart and pulls the straps tight around it. He hands the other to Newt with a quirked brow. It’s not an offer, it’s a request. But they’ve done this so long it goes unsaid and Newt takes it without a second thought as he nods at Gally. “You two are taking the east side.”

Minho nods as he lowers his head and straightens his shoulders. He lets Newt tug at the straps of his harness as he slips the gun into the mirroring pocket behind Minho’s heart. It’s another simple lesson they learned – this one four years ago.

Bullets can’t pierce through the handle of a pistol. The smirk on Brenda’s face when Gally had tried was enough to teach them that.

“Brenda and Teresa are on the west,” Newt continues, stepping away from Minho.

He lets his shoulders relax again and feels the weight of the guns around his heart. He reaches over his shoulder to test the access to it, but when he finds he’s able to grab the release strap, he drops it and turns to frown at Newt. “You two are splitting up, then?”

Newt’s jaw flexes as he pulls the brace around his leg tighter. “No, we’re taking the north.”

“That leaves the south unprotected,” Minho says, unnecessarily.

“Does it matter?” Gally asks.

Minho turns to see him leaning back against the table, arms crossed and face impassive.

No one bothers to answer.

They’re spared the silence when they hear a creaking in the other room, a wooden slat banging shut and then boots slamming onto the floor.

They all turn to the doorway as Thomas comes around the corner and into the room, shotgun slung around his back. “About three miles out. Where are the girls?”

Newt nods his head toward the room he just came from.

“We’d better get ready to move.” Thomas says while scratching his jaw, blunt nails brushing just below a long, ragged scar. 

With a glance back at Minho, Newt walks into the other room to round up the girls. 

Minho looks up to meet Thomas’ eyes briefly before Thomas turns and ducks around the corner again toward the outpost. A tight silence stretches in the small square room. Minho shakes it from himself and reaches down to the single-barrel rifle on the table, checking and then double checking the chamber. 

Gally’s voice cuts through and nearly sends a jolt to his chest. “Kinda makes Denver look like a walk in the park, huh?”

Minho tucks his lower lip between his teeth briefly as a projection of sepia-toned memories flashes through his brain. “You mean your suicide mission?”

Gally’s laugh is soft through his nose and, though he’s not looking at him, Minho can see in his mind the way Gally’s body shakes briefly with it; how his chest will have twitched forward with it, his shoulders following. “Is it technically called a suicide mission if I’m still here to tell the tale?”

Minho finally gives in and turns his head to face Gally and his smirk straight on. “It is when I’m the only reason you are.”

Gally’s smile twitches just a touch in tune with the way his eyes narrow just briefly. 

Minho turns back to the rifle and clicks the chamber in place. “Let’s not make a habit of it.”

“I think we’re a bit out of time to start making habits, don’t you?”

Minho gently places the rifle back onto the table, his hand lingering on the barrel. He hears Gally push off the table he’s been leaning on and feels him get closer until he brushes past him and walks to the other room. Minho’s teeth clench together briefly as he tries to dull the pulsing ache at his temples. 

  
  


_“You’re a goddamn idiot, you know that, right?” Minho asks, tearing another strip of fabric and pressing it to the rest piled at the wound in Gally’s side._

_Gally coughs out a laugh, swallows, and shifts his gaze from the ceiling to Minho. “Given that I stopped that entire--”_

_“Rhetorical, Gally.” Minho rips another strip of fabric and winds this one around Gally’s middle, wrapping it to hold the rest in place against the spilling wound._

_“Whatever.” Gally coughs again and Minho’s eyes flick to the small spray of blood that lands on his arm._

_He quickly finishes securing the bandage and rolls Gally onto his good side in time to watch Gally cough up another spot of blood. “Shit,” he exhales. “I’ve gotta get Teresa.”_

_Gally’s mouth flinches up into a smile again. “Don’t tell me that after everything we’ve been through, you actually want me to live now.”_

_Minho stares down at him, watches Gally’s glassed eyes slowly focus on him. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t want some crank to get the credit of killing you when I’m right here to do it myself.”_

_Gally’s smile widens a bit more. “Good.”_

_The word echoes through him as Gally turns back to press his forehead to the floor, eyes squeezing shut as his jaw flexes._

_Minho’s fist tightens at the back of Gally’s shirt. He knows he has to get Teresa, but something in him is screaming that if he leaves the room, so will Gally._

  
  


The bunker swims back into view in front of Minho as he hears something clatter in the doorway to the next room. He looks to the side as he hears a muffled _“damn it”_ and watches as Gally scoops up the dagger. 

He looks back over his shoulder, mumbling something about it not being tight enough.

“Need help?” Minho offers, the words forced out through the hollow in his chest.

Gally keeps his neck bent forward as he reaches over his shoulder to sheath the dagger. He flicks his gaze up to meet Minho’s and holds it while he pulls the straps. A zip of nylon against nylon rings out in the silence as he tugs and then he drops his arms to his sides and lifts his head. He gives a slight smile in response.

There’s a silence that takes over the space again now that nylon isn’t being tightened, daggers aren’t being sharpened, and guns are no longer being loaded. 

And then there’s heavy boots. Once, twice and a third time.

“Nervous?” Gally asks and his voice is loud in the room, compensating for the particles of tension that squeeze together to fill it. 

“No,” Minho says softly.

“Mm.” Gally nods and Minho can feel Gally’s eyes on him. “Scared?”

Minho’s brows quirk down. He considers it briefly - fear. Maybe he should be afraid. Maybe he should be worried right now, but it’s not that either. The thing is, his nerves and bones have seemed to quiet into a low sort of buzzing. And it’s not the buzzing that grows into a swarm of hornets inside of him and causes him to lash out. This buzzing is different; it’s calm, it’s settling. It’s almost as if he’s --

“Resigned?” Gally asks.

Minho finally looks up to meet Gally’s stare. He tastes and swallows the word, tries to see how it fits on the inside of him and when it locks into place like a puzzle, he isn’t quite sure if that’s a good or bad thing. “Aren’t you?”

Gally tilts his head and leans back against the table, looking out across the room. “It sounds like defeat.”

“You think we’ll win?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Gally laughs.

“So are you scared, then?”

Gally smiles, folding his arms across his chest. “No, not scared. Ready.”

Minho sees it then - the way Gally’s smile is actually genuine and not something to mask what he’s really feeling. Gally reads like a chalkboard, is the thing; he’s got everything printed on him for everyone in the room to see, no matter the seat. And lately, Minho tends to find himself in the front row. “Ready? Isn’t that the same as being resigned?”

“Not at all. See, there’s a choice here. You can either be reluctant to accept what’s gonna happen, or you can be ready for it. Meet it when it comes.”

“You want to lose.”

Gally turns his head to face him, smile still there. And it reads so clearly that he doesn’t need the confirmation. But still, Gally gives it. “Does anyone really _want_ to lose?”

“So why accept it so easily?”

“Who said anything about ‘easily’?” 

“You sound like you are.”

Gally shakes his head and takes a breath. “The way I see it, I should have died ten years ago in that bunker surrounded by those other kids. When that landmine went off, we were done for. Somehow I got out. And then, of course, there was you.”

Minho’s jaw twitches as he remembers waking up on the dusted wooden floor to Gally’s gasps, watching him blink himself awake and pull through. 

“And now there’s today.” Gally’s smile remains, but it’s soft around the edges. His eyes arc and narrow before he blinks himself away from some reverie and back to Minho. “When you play the missed connections game with death as many times as I have, you start to look for him around every corner. It’s not like you wanna see him, but you’re not surprised when you do.”

“That’s dark.”

“So is the world outside. It’s called adapting.”

“It sounds more like resignation than what I feel.”

“No,” Gally laughs and shakes his head. “You want to believe you’re fighting back against it, but you’re not. You gave up before you even pulled yourself out of bed today.”

Minho flinches inwardly at the accusation, but mostly at the truth of it. “And when did you?”

“The day I stood up and walked out of that bunker.”

Minho lets the words settle between them, mostly for Gally’s sake. When he decides he wants to forget the way they sound coming from his mouth, he speaks over the thought. “Well, with your survival rate, you’re doing a bang up job.”

Gally flashes another smile and it’s all teeth. For a moment, he looks like something vicious carved from war. “Third time’s a charm.”

“Heads up,” Brenda’s voice rings out.

Minho turns in time to lift his hand and snatch the small flask tossed to him. A moment later, Gally does the same. They tuck the flask of water into the pouch at their waist. It’s a precaution: in case of separation. Enough water to get them a bit past the battle to make it to the next shelter. 

A quick glance between himself and Gally is all he needs to confirm this is useless. Ready is starting to feel a lot closer to home than resignation, and he’s thinking that might be an advantage this time around.

“Everyone ready?” Newt asks.

Minho looks over at him. Teresa and Brenda stand behind him, geared up and impassive. Teresa’s still got a dark blue mark blossoming against her cheek and surrounding her left eye. It spreads up into the black waves of her hair and disappears. He briefly wonders if she’ll ever have time to watch the bruise fade. 

Gally’s elbow nudges Minho’s and he blinks himself away from the bruise he’d caused. He grabs the rifle from the desk and props it against his shoulder. “Ready,” he nods.

  
  


_The heat bites into his skin and Minho pulls the fabric higher up around his neck._

_“Stop fussing with it,” Gally says. “It’s gonna keep falling and you’re gonna get burnt. Just accept it.”_

_Minho rolls his eyes and tugs at the fabric once more. “I’d rather not be wasting supplies taking care of burns when they could’ve been avoided.”_

_Gally sighs out into the desert’s heat and turns to face Minho. He slings the shotgun over his back. “Watch my six.” He reaches forward and focuses on the fabric tied at Minho’s neck. It falls loose as he unknots it and then Minho feels it brush against him. There’s a shock that runs through him when the cotton is contrasted by calloused fingers against his pulse. He looks up to see Gally focused, brows set low and mouth in a line as he folds the fabric once more and then presses it against the back of Minho’s neck. It pulls around him then, blocking out a bit of the burn from the sun and then he feels Gally’s knuckle gently press beneath his chin. Minho obliges, raising his chin a bit to allow Gally to knot the fabric and tuck the remains inside the wrap. A blunt nail scratches along his skin and he flinches just enough for Gally to notice._

_“Relax. I’m not trying to slice your throat anymore.”_

_“Sure about that?” Minho tries through a shallow laugh._

_Gally flicks his gaze up to meet Minho’s. His eyes are dark, his face impassive, but Minho thinks that he can almost read what he’s thinking, even after only knowing him for three days._

_The moment passes quickly and Gally drops his hands from Minho’s neck. “Not another complaint about the heat, got it?”_

  
  


The heat bites into his skin, but he’s been burnt enough by this point to no longer complain about it. His boots press into the hard sand and he squints out across the desert. 

Another set of boots joins the five of them as Thomas hops down from his nest. He spends most of his time up there after Gally and Newt built a slated roof over it. Thomas is restless, Minho quickly grew to learn. Always watching, always looking for the next move. He rarely ever sees Thomas out of the nest, but he hopes if he gets out of here, he can find a sense of peace inside a house on ground level - one where he and Newt can finally live.

“Well, it’s been fun,” Brenda says, checking the magazine of her gun and pressing it back in place. “See you guys on the other side.”

Minho tries to offer a smile, but his features seem frozen as he watches Brenda and Teresa walk off toward the west side of the bunker.

Newt turns to Minho and Gally. “Eyes up over there, yeah?”

Gally nods at Newt and Thomas in turn and then looks at Minho, waiting.

Minho stills, unsure where to go from here. For the life he’s grown up in, saying goodbye isn’t as normal as one might think. Last looks between people have become such a normalcy that goodbyes seem redundant. 

It was in Boulder that they lost Frypan in a raid. In Maricopa, they did a headcount at the basecamp and realized Winston never made it back. And in the arid heat of the Tucson desert just a few weeks ago, Minho watched Ben get gunned down ten feet to the left of him. 

There were never any goodbyes among the group. Not when the reunions were the rarer of the two outcomes.

Minho nods at Newt and Thomas and takes a step back before turning from them altogether. His grip flexes around the rifle and he feels Gally walking in step next to him as they head to the eastern side of the bunker. 

“Ready?” Gally asks.

Minho thinks about last words.

  
  
  


_“Do you think this will ever end?” Minho asks, eyes on the ceiling and thin blanket the only divide between his back and the charred wooden floor below him._

_“The heat?” Gally asks._

_“The fighting.”_

_Silence answers him and it lasts long enough that, for a moment, Minho wonders if Gally’s actually fallen asleep._

_“Not in our lifetime,” Gally answers. “But one day, maybe. If we do our jobs right.”_

_Somewhere to the left a disgruntled snore cuts through their whispers. Minho turns to look over at Winston, but finds him sound asleep - mouth open and jaw slack._

_“You don’t think we’ll ever see it?” Minho asks, eyes still on Winston._

_“You do?”_

_He turns to Gally then and finds Gally’s eyes on him, studying him. He considers the question and suddenly realizes he knows the answer. What he doesn’t know is what keeps him from saying it out loud._

_“It’s good to hope,” Gally finally says, quieter than anything they’ve said prior._

_“This coming from you?” Minho asks, a small laugh bubbling up in the darkness._

_But Gally just watches him and for the first time, there’s no joke on the edge of his tongue waiting to lash out and strike the heaviness down. “If it keeps you going, it’s good. No matter what it is.”_

_“What is it for you?”_

_Gally’s eyes flick between Minho’s and then he turns to look back up to the ceiling. “We need to sleep.”_

_It’s hours later when Minho’s eyes slowly open. He doesn’t know when he fell asleep, nor when Gally did, but he takes in the shape of Gally’s silhouette, his chest rising and falling in the dull, slated moonlight. As it falls, a stripe of light falls between them and Minho follows it to the thin gap between their hands._

Minho turns around the corner of the bunker and thinks about the idea of a future. It’s a word that’s always tasted foreign on their tongues, has fallen down the ladder of Frequently Used Terms. He made it a point to stop envisioning what it might look like, but today he allows himself the brief moment to imagine a world where their bunker isn’t filled with guns and daggers, but with chairs and books. A place they’d use for a life and not for protection. Somewhere they could breathe and not only hide. Somewhere he might discover a word for whatever slipped from the moonlight and found a home in the gap between his and Gally’s hands all those nights ago. 

He thinks about the idea of a future. One in which he can turn to Gally in the setting sun like he does now and say something other than “fix your lace.” 

A future where Gally doesn’t have to respond with “watch my six” as he crouches to pull the laces of his boot tied once again.

A future where Minho doesn’t have to prop his rifle on his shoulder and scan the horizon. One where he could, instead, watch the way Gally’s fingers - no longer scarred from years of war - tangle with laces, work them like a marionette. The bones beneath Gally’s hands shift and for a brief moment, Minho thinks of a future where he’d get to put his hand on top of them and feel the way they move. 

For the last time, Minho allows himself to think about the idea of a future.

  
  
  


The gash in his arm sears as the sand bites into it. He rolls quickly to the left as a knife slams into the ground next to him and then he lifts his boot up and makes contact with something that crunches. The shadow disappears from behind his eyelids and he opens his eyes to moonlight again as he springs up from the floor and aims his barrel at the body below him. The shot rings out into the desert, joining the rest in a symphony of war.

It’s chaos, as it usually is. His finger finds a home in the metal loop around the trigger and the way each shot pushes back into him becomes a comforting feeling. It lets him know he’s still alive, he’s still fighting. It lets him know he’s winning.

He nails another one; he watches the bullet bury itself in the chest of someone raising a knife over him. When they fall, it’s a direct view across the sand to Gally. Seeing him fighting, moving, alive -- Minho finds it easier to take a breath. But it’s when Gally gets pinned to the floor that Minho freezes. He watches Gally reach over his shoulder to the dagger, but the holster is empty. There, ten feet away from Gally, further from Minho, it lies in the sand. Fallen and forgotten. It’s a brief second that they lock eyes and in that second, Minho sees a fear in Gally that’s never been there before.

And then a knife finds comfort in Gally’s side, in the place where Minho knows holds a scar from a bullet all those years ago. 

Minho aims, fires, and barely focuses enough to watch the body fall off of Gally. He’s already sliding across the sand on his knees, gun abandoned. 

  
  


_There’s a hand at his throat as he gets pushed against the brick wall. He lifts an arm and brings his elbow down hard to release it, but the other hand quickly picks up where the other left off._

_Minho presses his boot against the wall and pushes forward, ignoring the pressure at his neck and landing a fist in the guy’s stomach instead._

_The scuffle continues until Minho is sitting on the guy’s chest, dagger poised at the hollow of the guy’s throat._

_“Nice form,” he says, brown eyes meeting Minho’s. He reaches up to Minho’s hand and angles it forward, placing the tip of the dagger just below his jaw. “This will hurt more,” the guy says through a smile._

_Minho flicks his gaze down to where the stranger’s hand holds Minho’s; he looks at the way the tip of the dagger is pressed into the skin below the guy’s chin. A swift push and he’d be dead at Minho’s hand. Instead, Minho straightens his shoulders. “What’s your name?”_

_The guy below him smiles. “You like to get personal before you kill someone?”_

_Minho’s eyes narrow just slightly. A split second later, he’s rolled onto his back. The dagger is gone from his grip and now the guy is leaning over him, pressing it into Minho’s cheek. His hand is at Minho’s throat again; it’s almost beginning to feel like a comfort._

_“Gally,” he says. The dagger presses closer, but his hand at Minho’s throat loosens. “Yours?”_

_It’s hours later that Minho finally gives his name, and the way it sounds in Gally’s voice that night is enough to make him question why anyone has ever bothered saying it before._

  
  


“Minho,” he coughs out. One hand is pressed to his side but the other grips at Minho’s holster and then crawls up to the shirt. He fists the material and tugs. “Min.”

Thoughts ricochet through Minho’s head and he suddenly doesn’t know where to put his hands first. There’s a gunshot somewhere behind him, but he can’t bring himself to focus on the battle anymore. For him, for Gally, for the six of them -- it was lost to begin with.

The idea of a future was never one that really quite stuck. Sure, they’d toy with the option, but none of them really expected to greet it when it showed up. They’d all be gone long before a future decided to step foot in the abandoned desert they’ve made a home. 

There’s a type of comfort in a lost battle before it has even begun. The warmth of it as it spreads across hands and spills over torn lips. Losing, in its own way, can be a branch of winning. Minho watches the splatter of blood hit his arm as Gally coughs again. Loss tastes different in the heat of an evening’s war. Minho learns a brand new meaning of “future” as he presses his mouth to Gally’s. He curls his fingers in Gally’s shirt and presses his forehead to Gally’s. In the small space between them, Minho realizes that for all his bravado, Gally made a point between being ready and being resigned. 

He’s not ready for the bullet, but he’s ready for the future it will bring him in Gally’s arms.


End file.
